Heart Earth - Ivan Doig [19]
Where lessons were quick. One pant cuff instantaneously full of fiendish tiny needles and you know not to brush by a prickly pear again.
The saguaros seemed to welcome me into the desert democracy of light. Morning shadows of several-armed cactus in stretching dance toward Wickenburg, stubby clumps at noon, reversed elongation toward the Hieroglyphic Mountains in honor of evening. Here even I, according to the shadow possibilities of my prowling boy-body and its swoopbrimmed hat, was a hive of wizards.
And so did the Ford play into my newest seizure of imagination, its exaggerated groundcloud of shade the perfect pantomime companion for the game of Allen-Prescott-and-the-runaway-Terraplane. Allen told it on himself, how his Hudson Terraplane—an old behemoth sedan he had cut the back out of, hybridizing it into a kind of deluxe ranch runabout and carryall—hung up on a low shale bank when he was puttering out to fix fence between his ranch and Faulkner Creek. When he got behind the car with a crowbar, his mighty pry liberated the Terraplane but also flung him to his knees. By the time he could clamber back onto his feet the car was trundling away at a surprising pace. That tale of the Terraplane planing across the terra, Allen in hotfoot pursuit, was tailormade for a lone boy and a suggestible Ford, you just bet it was. In and out of the parked coupe I flung myself, its shadowline and mine the pageant of Allen's frantic chase, a pretend reel of barbwire bucking out and bowling wickedly at his/my shins, mock fence-posts clacketing against each other as they fly out of the bed of the bounding runaway, reenacted dodging of a five-pound nailbox tipping over, the Terraplane/Ford laying a silver trail of spikes.
The desert, it is said, makes people more absolute. While I kite around among the cacti, my father pegs away at the chore of recuperation, and the indigo of the desert night draws down into my mother's pen.
Everyone else is in bed but I'm not ready to go just yet, so will spend my time writing you. Pretty chilly tonight. Keeps me busy poking wood in the fire....
We are all pretty well at present. Charlie is getting along alright or seems to be, anyway. His side is sore yet, and he has to be careful, but that is to be expected....
This is a good place to rest, & that's what Charlie needs.... I always thought a desert is just nothing, but have changed my mind ... It is really beautiful here, in the desert way....
Got 2 welcome letters from you yesterday. So glad to hear from you, Wally, and know you're O.K. Was surely too bad about your buddy being lost in that storm. I don't think any of us have a good idea of what you guys have to go through.
***
Logbook of the Ault, March 19, 1945, off Okinawa:
0814 SIGHTED ENEMY PLANE (JUDY) MAKING SUICIDE DIVE ON FORMATION. PLANE WAS TAKEN UNDER FIRE AND SHOT DOWN BY A.A. FIRE. PLANE FELL OFF PORT BEAM OF USS ESSEX.... OBSERVED USS FRANKLIN AND USS WASP BURNING AT A DISTANCE.
1318 SIGHTED TWO ENEMY PLANES (ZEKES) MAKING ATTACK ON FORMATION. MANEUVERED AT EMERGENCY TURNS AND SPEEDS. COMBAT AIR PATROL SHOT DOWN ONE DISTANT 5 MILES. OTHER PLANE MADE SUICIDE DIVE ON TASK GROUP AND WAS SHOT DOWN BY ANTIAIRCRAFT FIRE.
2145 ...COVERING THE WITHDRAWAL OF USS FRANKLIN, BADLY DAMAGED AND IN TOW TO WESTWARD.
***
March, 1991. I am in Wickenburg again, to write this of us. Now as then, a war is on; this time, American